Willard Hotel Preens as the Center of Political Attentions

At 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Willard is two blocks from the White House. It is where Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," where President Ulysses S. Grant popularized the term lobbyist for the political-influence peddlers who pursued him there; where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked on his "I have a dream" speech.

But the Willard was closed in 1968 and scheduled for demolition. The celebration, "Willard 2006: A Hotel's Legacy, A Nation's History," commemorates the 20th anniversary of the hotel's reopening in 1986.